Monday, July 21, 2008

Last week the hiking trip to Yellowstone didn't work out, so we ended up going to Stanley for the day!! As I wrote in my last blog, I had really wanted to see Stanley and it was way better than expected. It is 2 1/2 hours there on a really curvy road, but we made it with no one getting car sick or killed. The population of Stanley is 100, but Redfish lake is right next to the town and set right below the Sawtooth mountains, so the area gets a lot of tourists in the summer. We went on a hike to Marshall Lake. After seeing it, like A of A, I think it deserves a better name than that. It was this small perfectly clear little pristine lake with a waterfall flowing into it off of one of the jagged Sawtooth mountains. We had to hike about 5 miles back to it. Gorgeous hike. Part of it was in the forest and then a good section of it was in some high meadows that had a lot of wildflowers. I'll try to post pictures on the next one. We started out at 6000 something elevation and had an increase of 1500 feet (took us to 8000 something feet) and then down to the lake 300 feet. My feet were tired by the end. It's a rare day when I hike 10 miles, but it was totally worth it.
Then on Saturday I went rafting with the group that was going camping. My friend Gina came, so that made the day even more enjoyable especially because it turned out to be a wild day. The directions sent out were totally wrong because they had come from google, so we were 2 hours late. Then the campsite was not visible from the dirt road because you had to hike down a steep enbankment 15-20 yards to get to the camp site by the river. We were about to give up on finding it (at this point I was pretty mad because we'd driven almost 2 hours to get up to the area), but decided to drive back down the main road one last time and when we did a couple of the guys had come out to stand by the road to look for us. I was glad that our drive wasn't a waste. Only 6 of us ended up going rafting. Last time, I thought it wasn't that rough, but this time was way harder. I was in the front the whole time and the rapids were more continuous. 3 times we almost fell out or flipped. I don't know how we didn't, except that there were a lot of prayers. It was really good that we didn't fall in because none of us had helmets! All of the helmets were sold out. After we stopped, the guys told us that they had seen a sign earlier that rafting on that section of the river could be dangerous, with rock walls on both sides and wasn't for the "faint-hearted". Great. When we stopped for lunch we found out that part of the raft was partially deflated. Apparently the plug had been hit with an oar and loosened. We were nowhere near the road, and it wasn't too bad, so we kept going. We missed the first area we were supposed to get off, but got off at a beach area were there were some hot springs. The Chinese couple who was with us went over immediately and laid down in them. I think they were kind of chilled from the icy river water. After hanging out there for awhile it was time to take the raft to the car, so we tried to carry it, mostly inflated back the the car on a trail that was like 2 ft wide. We deflated the raft and carried it and the equipment up to the car. And I do mean up. It was quite a hike back to where the car was. I'm glad I didn't have to carry the raft. When we got back to the campground some more people had come. Gina and I headed back home via Idaho City (old capitol and almost ghost town) where we stopped for some ice cream. I heard yesterday that after we left that there was a rattlesnake in the campground. One of the guys decapitated it with a shovel and then they ate it for dinner. While kind of cool, that affirmed the decision not the stay the night.
That covers the recent excitement here. Pray that I'll find an apartment!

Sunday, July 13, 2008


For all of you family and friends in the south, I'm coming down! Less than two weeks -- a little earlier than expected. I'll be leaving on the 25th and getting to Dallas hopefully on the 27th, and then on to Monroe on the 28th to find an apt. The apartment I thought I had lined up ended up falling through, so I'm on the hunt. Still feels like a lot of details are up the air presently about school, finances, and moving, but God's teaching me patience and I'm having to trust, which is good. ha Much easier to write than it is to put into practice.

This week, I'm going hiking with friends Kathy and Tom in Yellowstone. I'm really excited about that. We'll leave Tues. eve. and come back on Thurs. afternoon. Then the college/singles group at church is having a campout this weekend. If my plans weren't in hyperdrive, I would stay the whole time, but I'll go hang out with them for the day and go rafting. My friend Gina is planning to go up with me which will be a blast. I have been so blessed with good friends. I remember in high school really wanting and praying for friends and God has answered that prayer amazingly. I've especially been realizing this since last week on the way back from Red Mountain, we went through Grand Junction and stayed with my friend Andrea's family. They are so great. Her dad Ron has just written a book called Breaking the Cycle of Sin. I'm excited to read that. I then rode back home here with her here so she could visit for a couple of days. She always challenges me so much in my relationship with God, and she is hilarious. I laugh a ton when I'm with her. Thursday evening we met Gina and went to an old downtown-bohemian-green-everyone is riding bicycles for their transportation part of town. We got ice cream. Actually I got sorbet -- frozen lemonade was the flavor and it was delicious.

On our drive back as we got close to Twin Falls I saw the sign for Shoshone Falls (supposed to be "the nigagra of the west") and started talking about how I wished I could go there and McCall and Stanley this summer, but there was just no time or money left to be able to travel. I figured we would be stopping a few miles down the road in Twin Falls and started daydreaming and envisioning myself going to Stanley, ID (kind of lame, I know), when suddenly Andrea was pointing and telling me in a surprisingly calm voice that I was missing the exit that my parents were getting off on. I yanked the wheel hard and we barely made it onto the exit without going into the grass in between the exit and interstate. My parents had decided that we should go to Shoshone Falls! The waterfalls were really beautiful. It was a really hot day though, so we didn't spend a lot of time there. After that we ate dinner in Twin Falls at Golden Corral. Got home late that evening, unpacked, and collapsed into bed.

Red Mountain was great! It was so good to catch up with family and see everybody. Highlights for me were the salad lunch, cajun night, the variety show (especially G and G's skit), crown kebob cookoff, hiking (the one), ragball, and well, I guess I had a lot of highlights. :)
Frances, Frank? Come in Frank! For the BBC, I'm Charles Bluewater. Good Night.
P.S. Andrea told me about a class she's taken where she's been learning how to tell if someone is a wholistic thinker or sequential thinker. So we had a lot of fun with the tests to figure out what category we fell best under. Now that I'm looking at the blog I've just written, maybe I'm a backwardly sequential thinker? Is there such a thing? What are you?